Leaving your mark on the planet is generally a good thing and something worth striving for, except when it comes to environmental health. Every activity humans perform impacts the environment in some way, but this may not be immediately apparent. Making your home eco-friendly means earning the eternal gratitude of generations to come, as you will be leaving them with a cleaner and greener world to live in. Here are quick ways to make your home more eco-friendly.

Energy: Home is the place where you are at ease, where you can relax. Naturally, a dwelling also has to have the everyday comforts before anyone would even think of living in it; meaning it has to have a refrigerator and a dishwasher at the very least. These machines help us feel more comfortable, but they also expend a lot of electricity, causing massive carbon emissions. Here are some alternatives.

Refrigerator – Our ancestors used to store food in a cool and dark place, such as a cellar. If there are no cellars to be found in your immediate vicinity, you can at least minimize the power consumption of your refrigerator. Reduce its cooling by a few notches, turn it off when it’s empty and minimize the amount of time you stare at the contents unsure about what to eat next.

Dishwasher – The best way to save money and the environment is to turn the dishwasher off and use cold water with just a drop of detergent to wash your dishes.

Chemicals: Every year, tons of household products end up in rivers, where they poison the wildlife and eventually make their way into the water supply for you to drink them. Making the world safer, cleaner and healthier means simply scaling down the amount of chemicals we use in our daily lives.

Shampoo – A great natural alternative to chemical-laden shampoos we use every day is the baking soda shampoo. Simply mix a tablespoon of baking soda with 2 cups of water and you’ll get a wonderful shampoo that removes dandruff, sebum and oil buildup.

Window cleaners – Having sparkly clean windows is wonderful, but the window cleaning liquid tends to evaporate right back into your face as it’s being sprayed. Some natural and eco-friendly alternatives for window cleaning include vinegar and cornstarch.

Social media: Are you worried about what kind of world the next generation will live in? You should be. Click here and found out some easy ways to save money, energy and the environment.